I gasp as something monstrous in me stretches and spreads its wings, drawing its talons along my ribs. My red mark throbs once more, wrenching a cry from my mouth.
“Thyra,” I say. Or, I think I say it. I’m not sure the sound ever leaves my mouth. An unseen force flips me onto my back and slams me down against the hull. My eyes open wide, but I’m blind, everything white. It feels like a giant’s hand has descended from the sky and is holding me down. My heart is beating so fast that it’s one long, painful squeeze. Panic and terror flash so hot inside me that I’m burned. Has the witch queen returned for us? For me? Is this her final victory?
My backbone bows, my chest and hips rising while my shoulders and legs stay pinned. I can’t control my body at all. Fire bursts inside my mind, followed just as quickly by knives of ice that slice away my thoughts. I’m in a cage of flame and swirling snow, extremes that rip me apart and knit me together again, over and over. The feeling of being torn down my center is unbearable, but the force inside me is so huge that it cannot be denied or contained. It grows and grows and makes its home in my chest, crowding out everything I thought I was. Tears turn to ice crystals on my cheeks, then sizzle on my skin. The pain goes on and on. Now I’m the one who craves death as a mate.
The feeling goes as quickly as it came, dropping me limp onto the planks with a sudden thunk. My head cracks against the wood. My eyes blink open.
I’m alone on the raft. I bolt upright, looking around, my vision blurred.
Perhaps six feet from the makeshift boat, two heads bob in the dark water. Thyra and Sander. Both of them are staring at me with round, terrified eyes. “What happened?” I ask, still rocked by the aftershocks of whatever it was.
“Y-you—you . . .” Thyra swallows hard.
“You were struck by lightning,” Sander says weakly.
I look down at myself, sinking backward because I’m too weak to stay upright. My clothes are intact. Nothing is singed. The only thing that burns is the mark on my calf. “No, I wasn’t.”
“You were,” Thyra says, her voice high and tremulous. She swims toward the raft. “Hold still. I’m coming aboard.”
“Me too,” says Sander.
She gives him a hard look. “We’re done fighting tonight. If you truly wish to join my sister so soon, stay in the water.”
Sander lets out an annoyed breath, and the two of them heave themselves up on either side of me, landing at the same time and somehow managing not to tip our raft. Their clothes soak me, leaving me shivering between them as we all look up at the cruel stars, panting.
“We lost our oars,” Thyra murmurs. “They floated away when we fell in.”
“And both your daggers. And Cyrill’s. I’m sorry,” Sander mumbles.
“Fine by me, since all the two of you were doing was threatening to kill each other,” Thyra retorts. She turns her head. “I can’t believe you’re alive. When I saw that bolt come from the sky, I thought—” She closes her eyes, and I know she’s envisioning her father, charred and ruined within the fire.
Our faces are only a few inches apart. On any other occasion, this would make me unbearably happy. But right now, it’s too sad. We’re floating on an endless expanse of blackness, with no way home.
I would give everything I have to make it back. I would kiss the stony beach, dig my fingers in until grit burrowed beneath my fingernails. I would twist my hands in the long blades of grass that mark the edge of the dunes. I would lie by a warm fire and sneak glances of Thyra’s face when she’s asleep.
“I confess that this is not the way I wanted to die,” Sander says quietly. The desperation is stripped from his voice, and he sounds like a little boy again, the one who I was friends with before he lost his love and turned cruel and careless. “I didn’t want to have this much time to think about it.”
“I know what you mean.” I let out an unsteady breath. I have never been eager for death, but I always imagined it would be quick, a sudden, merciless slice instead of a slow unraveling.
“I still have a knife in my boot,” Thyra whispers.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “No. It won’t come to that.” I find her hand and clutch it tightly. Her fingers are stiff as icicles, and the feel of them makes my eyes burn. What I wouldn’t give for a good wind, a warm, blessed breeze to carry us to shore.
My hair flutters as a gust rushes over us, like a breath of summer.
“Oh, that felt good,” Thyra says, scooting slightly closer to me so that our bare arms touch. “I’m so cold.”
If Sander wasn’t here, I would offer my embrace and take the risk she’d rebuff it. But since he is, and with all that’s happened today, I don’t think I can take another failure without breaking. I settle for imagining the wind is an ally that will dry her clothes and warm her skin as it moves us along the smooth surface of the placid lake. I close my eyes and hold her hand, focusing on that wish so completely that it’s almost as if I can feel it stroking over me. I lose myself in the dream of it, even though I’m not sleeping. I’m too absorbed by the feel of Thyra’s skin, the way she’s caressing the back of my hand with her thumb, the way she’s looking at me like she never wants to look away. If I move, if I sleep, I’ll lose this final gift.
“I don’t believe it,” Sander mutters from beside me. “Is this really happening?”
I lift my head, but my vision blurs with dizziness, so I let it fall to the planks again. Waves of chill are cramping my muscles, but as soon as the pain makes me want to cry out, the cold is replaced by flashes of heat that make me sweat. I shudder. “Sorry. I’m still recovering from whatever happened earlier. Everything is moving. Spinning.”
“We are moving,” says Thyra, whose hand slips from mine.
My eyes meet hers. “What?”
Her hair is standing on end, blown by the warm wind that is gusting steadily now. Her pale eyes are wide, but no longer filled with fear and horror. Instead, they’re filled with awe—and hope. “This wind,” she says softly. “This wind . . . it’s blowing us to the northeast.”
I sit up, clutching my aching head and looking around. Sure enough, our makeshift raft is leaving a small wake behind it as we’re carried along the surface of the water. I let out a surprised chuckle, shivering as I feel the air caress my face. More, I think. I want to be home.
I sit there all night, fighting a squirmy, gut-churning feeling akin to snakes writhing beneath my skin, scared the miracle will end at any moment. But it doesn’t.
By the time the sun rises, the shore is in sight. The very harbor from which we launched our massive force just a day ago. I can already see people gathering on the docks, the small group of warriors who made up the secondary force, and the andeners who sacrificed so much to prepare us to go into battle. Sander looks over at Thyra. “What are you going to do?” he asks her, sounding uneasy.
She clenches her jaw and lifts her chin. “I’m going to lead.”
Sander gives her a skeptical look, and anxiety turns my stomach.
We promised them a victory. We promised them riches.
Instead we bring them ruin. We’ve survived one deadly storm—but we’re about to face another.
CHAPTER FOUR
By afternoon, the sky is the color of slate and spitting icy drops onto our sprawling settlement, contempt from the heavens. I sit wrapped in a coarse blanket by the fire in the large shelter for unpaired warriors, shaking with weakness, knowing I deserve every wet reminder of defeat that reaches me through the leaky thatch. I’m alone in here—most of the young warriors who shared this shelter with me traveled in the first wave. We were eager to prove ourselves, and we fought for our spots in the boats. Now most of the people I came up with, the ones I was tussling and laughing with only two days ago, are sleeping forever at the bottom of the Torden.
Thyra has been in the council shelter for hours, explaining our catastrophic defeat to our remaining warriors, the few hundred mostly older or weaker ones who stayed behind to guard the andeners, led by a gray-b
earded but thick-bodied warrior named Edvin. I begged to be by Thyra’s side as she took her place on the chieftain’s chair, stumbling after her on faltering legs as soon as our makeshift raft reached shore. Instead she put her arm around me and led me here.
She left me stunned and ashamed that I did not have the strength to follow.
Outside, the andeners are wailing, their quiet toughness shattered. Their warriors are not coming home. Their widows cannot cut themselves and bleed one last time over their lost loves. They cannot bury their mates with their swords on their chests, ready to meet eternity. This is worse than death, worse than loss—it is nothingness. Utter defeat. And there is more than grief in their cries—I can hear their fear. With thousands camped on these shores, stretched from Ulvi Point to Sikka Harbor, the southernmost tip of our territory and the launching point for our ships, we have been unassailable, a marauding people who sleep safe, unafraid of the nomad tribes that make their shelters as near to the lakeshore as they dare.
Now, though . . . as winter descends, and as news of our devastation spreads, we will become the hunted.
I raise my head as Sander and Aksel, Edvin’s only son and another of the second-wave warriors, trudge into the shelter. Sander has a wineskin in his hands, and he holds it out when he sees me huddled by the fire.
I shake my head, and he frowns. “Have you eaten?”
“Not hungry. And we should save what we can.” I stare at the fire to avoid their gazes, and the flames dance for me, twining together like the fingers of lovers.
“There’s plenty,” says Aksel, shaking raindrops from his mane of tangled brown hair. He doesn’t remind us that the surplus is because half our number are dead, but I have no doubt they’re thinking it, same as I am.
“We’ll need it when the snow comes.”
“Doesn’t mean you should starve yourself today. If you expect to help keep watch, you can’t be faint and weak.” Sander’s voice is sharp as his ax blade. “Unless weakness is your new preferred state.”
Icy anger flashes across my skin, so cold I imagine I can see my own breath as I exhale. I almost say Wasn’t it yours, just a few hours ago? But I don’t have the energy or strength to fight him right now, so instead I mutter, “When have I ever shirked my duty?”
Aksel plops down next to me and nudges my blanket- covered arm with his bare, wiry shoulder. One kill mark decorates his upper arm, and bruises bloom like nightflowers around his left eye. He fought like a crazed animal to gain a spot in the first wave, but now I wonder if he’s glad he and his father both lost. He gives me a sideways smile and offers a hunk of bread. “Put that in your stomach. We need you out there.”
I take it, meeting Sander’s dark eyes before looking away again. He sits down on the other side of the fire. “Thyra’s still in the council shelter,” he says, running a hand through his shorn black hair. “She won’t be able to keep us whole.”
I sit up straight, the hard bread clenched in my fist. “Don’t underestimate her.”
Aksel shifts uncomfortably next to me. “My father says she’ll face a challenge soon.”
I give him a peeved look. “Your father should hold his tongue. That kind of talk spits on the memory of Lars—and it could tear us apart.”
“Or unite us.” Sander leans forward suddenly, staring at me through the dancing flames.
The flames between us rise with a burst of cold wind from outside. “Behind her, I hope you mean. You’ve seen her fight, Sander. You know how clever she is.”
“Oh, we all know that,” he mutters. “Have you ever wondered if she’s too clever?”
Jaspar, Nisse’s son, used to say that all the time. “Stop it. She is a force to respect. Her father certainly did, and that should be good enough for you.”
Sander looks into the fire. “What if she doesn’t lead us down the path he would have chosen?”
I glance at Aksel, who is studying his boots. “Thyra is our new chieftain,” I say. “It’s her path to choose now.”
Aksel sighs. “Our tribe is broken.”
Panic punches through me. This tribe is all I have. “You sound like a weakling,” I say savagely.
Aksel’s fists clench, but he relaxes again as he takes in my sweat-sheened face. “I don’t like it any better than you do, but some are already talking about taking their andeners and striking out on their own. Such a big settlement, with so few warriors to guard it . . . They think it might be safer if they head to the northwest. Or the south.”
“Toward Vasterut?”
“Chieftain Nisse might take us in.”
“Or he might skin us alive and turn our hides into saddles.” I scoff. “He’s a snake, and a poisonous one at that! We may have suffered losses, but we are not defeated. Why should we crawl to him as if we were?”
Sander clenches his jaw and tosses a stone into the fire, sending sparks into the air. “Because we might not survive the winter if we don’t!” He gestures angrily outside, where a group of andeners, nearly all women, are beating their breasts and howling at the sky, while their rag-footed children watch with solemn eyes from inside the shelters. “We have herds of horses but no riders! We have thousands of mouths to feed but no raiders to plunder!”
Aksel stares out the shelter door. “Thyra thinks we should stay put, use our cached supplies for the winter, and plant in the spring. Like a bunch of farmers! She sounded like an andener. Several warriors walked out of the meeting.”
“Including the two of you.” Now I understand why they’re here, why Thyra isn’t.
Sander nods. “We couldn’t stomach it.”
“You must have misunderstood what she was suggesting,” I say. “We’re Krigere, and she knows that.” We don’t root ourselves in the earth—we rule it, taking what we want when we want.
Aksel shakes his head, pushing tangled locks off his brow. “She wants to be a sheep, not a wolf.”
Sander’s eyes narrow. “You know this, Ansa. You just don’t want to see it.”
He’s pulling on the tiny voice of doubt inside me, and I hate him for it. “Are you just lashing out because we witnessed your despair and pathetic weakness after the battle?”
Sander gives Aksel an uneasy sidelong glance. “My weakness was momentary. Thyra’s is part of who she is. She has no thirst for blood. The others see it. You would have walked out too, if you’d heard what she was suggesting. Whatever you are, Ansa, you’re not a sheep.”
I bare my teeth. “The first intelligent thing you’ve said since coming in here. But Thyra has my loyalty and my blades.” My cheeks heat. “As soon as I earn myself some new ones,” I mutter.
“You won’t have to earn them,” Aksel says, his broad face sagging with sadness. “We’ve lost nineteen out of twenty warriors, and many of them will have left weapons behind.”
The thought of all those blades, made for vital, ferocious men and women who died scared and helpless, feels like a ball of ice in my gut. I hunch over it, my eyes stinging.
Aksel curses. “My teeth are going to chatter right out of my skull. I’m going to get more wood for the fire.” I listen to the shuffle of his feet as he heads out.
“It would be warmer if we were in here with all our brothers and sisters,” Sander says to nobody in particular. “The least we can do is honor their memories instead of pissing on them.”
“Now honoring the dead is important to you?” The crackling roar of the fire matches the rush of irritation through my veins. I jerk my head up. “One more nasty little insinuation about Thyra and I’ll tear your throat out.” The fire is burning so high that it’s blackening the thatch above our heads, but it wanes as I slump, as if it somehow knows my mood. “I won’t believe a thing you’ve said until I speak with Thyra myself,” I say, suddenly tired.
“Fair enough.” Sander eyes the fire, then glances at me. “You don’t look well, Ansa.”
I lay my blanket along the edge of the fire and sink onto it. “I’m fine. Just tired. Aren’t you?”
&
nbsp; “I am. But . . .” Our eyes meet. “I wasn’t struck by lightning.”
“Obviously I survived. So obviously it wasn’t lightning.”
“Your eyes glowed like lanterns. Your body arched up like it was about to snap in half. The light was so bright I was nearly blinded.” He makes an impatient noise as he lies down on the other side of the fire. “If it wasn’t lightning, what was it?”
I am so sleepy that I barely hear him. “Doesn’t matter now,” I mumble. I had wanted to stay awake until Thyra returned, but I can’t. Exhaustion is pulling me under its waves. I sink into blackness, happy for the temporary respite from the memories of shattered ships and thrashing limbs and Lars’s burning body lost in the fire.
Fire.
A spark, really. In the dark pit of my rest, it flares to life, orange and bright. I stare, fascinated, as it burns without fuel, growing slowly, licking the air around me with its serpent tongue. I have never seen the sun burn in the night, but I imagine this is what it looks like. The heat slides over my face. It’s such a relief after all my cold despair, but as sweat beads my brow, I wish I could scoot away from it. It’s growing by the second, expanding into my space. I cringe back, whimpering, as it nips at my toes, the tip of my nose, my eyelashes and hair.
I cry out as it licks my stomach and chest, as it presses against me, setting me aflame, boiling my blood, cooking my eyeballs. The shrill sound of my own scream pierces the roar and crackle, but the flames jump down my throat, and then they’re inside me, filling me up.
“Ansa!”
My eyes fly open to find my dream made real. The air is filled with sparks and smoke and screaming. Sander’s silhouette fills the doorway of the shelter, and he’s beckoning me toward him while he holds a cloth over his mouth. Between us is a wall of flame. I’m surrounded by it. If I stand here, I’ll burn alive, but my only alternative is to run through the fire. There is nothing between my skin and those flames, and the thought sends an icy chill over my body. Even in the inferno, I shiver; it feels as if frost is covering my skin.